for the record (re: guns thread)

I guess I'm mildly resentful/annoyed at certain people's penchants for speaking disparagingly about, as Petro eloquently described as, an "inanimate tool."Would it be crazy to assume that statistically cars are about a 1000:1 more dangerous than guns? And yet, we buy 16 year olds cars without batting an eyelash.But really, this is all aside from the point. The point that seems to still being overlooked by certain individuals here at EvC is what we can learn by understanding the tone of the times-- looking at the ethos of any given society. In the, say, 1950's, there were more people per capita owning guns than there are now. Did people often go on shooting spree's and rampages? No. So, what happened between then and now?Look no further than the counter-culture that we are allowing to fester. I mean, lets face it... Guns don't discharge themselves. And most people aren't so obtuse that they can't understand what muzzle control means.Are we really surprised that we are reaping what we sowed?Look at television, the movies, music videos, video games, etc, that are painting pictures for these young one's that they can empower themselves through the threat of violence. And as we often see in the gang culture-- live by the sword, die by the sword.The irony of it is that the loudest opponents to guns are often the one's defending and coddling the very culture that perpetuates this violence. Instead of connecting the dots, like any rational person would do, they'd rather blame the guns themselves. They would rather pester responsible, law abiding gun owners instead of trying to redirect societal influence to something positive.Can I get a hallelujah?

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"God is like the sun. You can't look at it. But without it you can't look at anything else." -G.K. Chesterton

Thank you much kind sir/madam Option One Nah, that's an unrealistic goal. Besides, banning altogether will only ensure that people will want it all the more. Humans are funny because they either want what they can't have, or want that which is considered taboo. This should go in the censorship thread. Is it better to suppress ideas that ultimately cause our degradation, or should we set and maintain a standard to follow that will be our best interests? Its not an easy topic, because while we value our Amendment rights to the freedom of speech without the fear of reprisal, for some reason, we in this country seem to think that the freedom of speech entails complete and total licentiousness. Sometimes there is no balance.And when they do try and balance it, it comes out like an FCC regulation. Case in point: The FCC has no moral qualms with showing a movie where a man shoots another man 42 times and blood is spraying from every wound, so long as they are sure to bleep out the part where he calls him an asshole just before he shoots him. Whew! Glad they bleeped that out. When you say "funding" it makes think of the government. I am very libertarian when it comes to these sort of things. I don't believe that it is the governments responsibility to buy pharmaceuticals from privatized companies. This is where I'm very libertarian. I want the least amount of government possible. This nation began with individualistic aspirations to shift away from tyrannical dictatorships. We still need freewill. We simply need balance between Big Brother and total licentiousness.Option Two? Well, these sound reasonable, except they also sound like platitudes. I agree, which is why somewhere along the line, we need some balance. I don't think a single person would advocate something so extreme. I think Hollywood started out trying to capture the essence of society. What ended up happening is that they are now shaping it. Its difficult because we are all entertained by the drama, but we'd be foolish to think that it isn't making an impact as well.I just read a chapter, entitled, "The Knife Went In," on a terrific book that I'm reading. I think his testimony summarizes what I believe to be the root of the problem-- a culture that desperately seeks to exonerate itself from fault, perpetuated by a class of elitists and master whiners who constantly search for victims to exploit for their own political gain."As a doctor who sees patients in a prison once or twice a week, I am fascinated by prisoners' use of passive mood and other modes of speech that are supposed to indicate their helplessness. They describe themselves as marionettes of happenstance.

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Not long ago, a murderer entered my room in the prison shortly after his arrest to seek a prescription of methadone to which he was addicted. I told him that I would prescribe a reducing dose, and that within a relatively short time my prescription would cease. I would not provide a maintenance does for a man with a life sentence.

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"yes," he said, "its' just my luck to be here on this charge." Luck? He had already served a dozen prison sentences, many of them for violence, and on the night in question had carried a knife with him, which he must have known from experience that he would be inclined to use. But it was that victim of the stabbing who was the real author of the killer's action: if he hadn't been there, he wouldn't have been stabbed.

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My murderer by no means alone in explaining his deed as due to circumstances beyond his control. As it happens, there are three stabbers (two of them unto death) now in the prison who used precisely the same description. "The knife went in." they said when asked to recover their allegedly lost memories of the deed.

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The knife went in--unguided by human hand, apparently. That the long-hated victims were sought out, and the knives carried to the scene of the crime, was nothing compared to the willpower possessed by the inanimate knives themselves, which determined the unfortunate outcome." -Theodore DalrympleNow, substitute knife, with gun, and the outcome is still the same from the one we just read in this story. At the end of the day, the unapologetic criminal blames anything other than himself for his actions, or if he does, he has a multitude of justifications for why it was acceptable for him to have done his deeds while in the commission of a crime.The unrepentant criminal says, "the knife went"... "the gun just went off"... "if only they weren't home at that time. I tried to plan it so that they wouldn't be home when I entered their residence. In a way, its their own fault. I was just scared. And the knife went in."Equally guilty is the class of people who are in need of these cases so they can coddle the criminal and victimize the real victims, all the while using it as a political platform to push their agendas. Instead of keeping things in perspective, they would rather blame guns than blame the hands that wield them. Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : Added applicable quotes

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"God is like the sun. You can't look at it. But without it you can't look at anything else." -G.K. Chesterton